Be the CEO of Your Own Health: Create Your Perfect, Feel-Good Lifestyle

Chapter 1

Facing the Future of Your Health

Iwrite this book for those that have worked hard their whole lives to be successful financially and offer something to the world as well as to themselves and their family. If this is you, then I am talking to you. To be driven in such a way that leaves you at the top of whatever empire you have built is phenomenal. Maybe childhood insecurities have been the driving force behind your success. Maybe fears of not being able to have the financial freedom that your parents had are behind your motivation and success. Maybe the opposite is true, being tired of not having enough growing up was your motivation. Either way, what you need now is the ability to live a long and active life around your present financial success. It does no good to wish and hope for an escape from the voluminous onset of autoimmune diseases besetting our populations at this current time in our lives! Speaking of these problems is not designed to instill fear in anyone, rather to point out that even though we are under a barrage of illnesses in our country, it is important to face these conditions around us and not to look away, burying our heads in the sand. We must not look away. Fearing the doctor is understandable, but avoiding certain knowledge of our health is not! Our country has been changed from what at one point was considered the leading nation in health care to one of the least successful. The United States ranks thirty-seventh on the list of the world’s health systems according to the World Health Organization (WHO). We now have more autoimmune diseases than ever before. Some physicians and healers even classify cancer as an autoimmune disease because it attacks us from within…and it is rampant! How did this happen?

From the Land of the Free to the Land of So Many Illnesses

To understand why there is confusion about what is good for you and what is not, we must first look at what is driving the information we get. The medical profession has changed drastically. There was a time when doctors made house calls. This might seem crazy in today’s world, but it is true. Now a doctor is very unlikely to make a house call unless he/she is handsomely paid for this extra service, or unless the patient is a very good friend to the doctor. Today a doctor with his own practice is heavily burdened by malpractice insurance and the terms of his profession dictated by the government, among other reasons. Doctors today can’t spend more than the required time set for all of the patients he sees in a day, which limits the amount of information he is provided with. Essentially, doctors work long hours and have little time to think sideways when it comes to personal attention for any of his or her patients. A doctor in this country also has very little nutritional education in his curriculum at med school, including pre-med. This makes for a difficult situation for most of us. How are we to trust our doctor when he/she is looking through the same lens he does for everyone else? He has no choice. His hands are tied. A doctor in this country can only legally treat a person with cancer in three ways, with surgery, radiation therapy, and/or chemotherapy. Yes, if a doctor or any healer makes a claim that they can cure anything by any other means, or protocol involving anything other than these three methods, they are subject to warnings, fines and ultimately arrests. A famous case of this in action is that of Dr. Andrew Weil, MD. He is a well-known professor at the medical school in Tucson, AZ. He has become known for his teachings using nutrition to support health, and is widely respected. Yet the FDA and the FTC warned him that if he did not stop suggesting that improving your immune system would help prevent you from getting the flu, he would be fined and sent to jail. His situation was well documented in the media. This example provided shows how difficult it can be for the majority of us to figure out what to believe and how to proceed living out a healthy and happy life in a country where there is so much intended confusion around health.

Nutrition Is Key to Understanding the Causes of Illness

Health problems will still remain if only the symptoms are treated.

The industry held responsible for making medicine to heal us has been accused, according to many news sources today, of defrauding the population, finding that big pharma is only interested in profits. The regulation of these entities is questionable at best and now their intentions are being questioned. Are pharmaceutical companies really making the best medicines to cure us of our maladies as a population? Or are they looking to make a profit? As an American, I would say both. I would have to stipulate that while pharmaceutical companies are in the business to make medicine, I do not think that their medicine is for cures anymore, but for symptoms. Just like putting a band aid on a cut. You are only treating the symptom, or what you can see. You are not treating the cause. You are not making an attempt at stopping the problem. No one is giving you instructions on how to change something, or take something, that will get rid of your problem. Only to relieve the symptoms of your problem. This does not sound like a solution, does it? It seems like once you have been prescribed a heart medicine or something for high blood pressure, it is a life sentence. Wouldn’t you feel better knowing that you were doing something to get rid of the problem forever and be well again? Taking a pharmaceutical drug has its consequences, they are called side effects. Sometimes these side effects outweigh the original problem. Listening to a television commercial advertise a new drug that has come out and hearing that a possible side effect is sudden death can’t feel right!

Symptomatic treatment is the existing paradigm of our health care system that dominates today. We are training professionals to treat our symptoms, not the cause. Perhaps it is because we still cannot agree on the causes of things. If you are reading this book, it might mean that you have lost faith in the existing model of health care that is current in our country. A new model has been appearing all over and has taken hold in many areas of our culture. Alternative medicine is the general term for what is considered the alternative to allopathic medicine, which is sanctioned by our system. The word alternative suggests a choice. I like choices. We all have to learn to make a choice for ourselves based on what we believe to be true and righteous. In order to make a choice we must be informed. I believe that is why you are reading this book.

Physician, heal thyself!—Aeschylus circa 525/524 BCE

Becoming the CEO of your own health is a reality. You do not need a medical degree to understand how you feel and what your particular system needs to feel better. I admit that for a broken bone or some such problem, a physician is exactly whom I